WASHINGTON

Statewide polling station closures began Tuesday as the 2024 White House race enters its final hours, ending more than a year of closely contested election campaigning.

Polling stations in parts of Indiana and Kentucky have begun to close as the race for the White House enters its final stretch

Closings will continue at half-hour to hourly intervals, with the last polls closing at midnight in Hawaii and 1 a.m. in Alaska.

Voters in… pic.twitter.com/Sw1lLx05F7

— Anadolu English (@anadolugency) November 5, 2024

Republican candidate Donald Trump and his Democratic rival Kamala Harris will claim successive US states on Tuesday as other states close their polls.

The closures have extended to large areas of the East Coast and the central and southwestern United States, while Trump has achieved state victories that give him 177 votes in the Electoral College compared to Harris’ 99.

Polls have already closed in the key states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, as well as more than three dozen others.

Recently, the Associated Press declared Harris the winner in New Jersey and New York, while Trump scored victories in North Dakota, South Dakota, Louisiana, Texas, Wyoming and Nebraska.

Either candidate needs to obtain 270 Electoral College votes to claim victory. Electors are assigned to states based on their population, and most states award all of their delegates to the candidate who wins the state in the general vote.

However, the winner-take-all model is not followed in Nebraska and Maine, which instead allocate their votes based on the outcome in congressional districts as well as the winner of the state’s popular vote.

Poll closings will continue at half-hour to hourly intervals, with final closings in Hawaii at midnight Eastern Time (0500GMT), followed by Alaska at 1 a.m. Eastern Time (0600GMT).

The race will almost certainly come down to the seven key battleground states (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Wisconsin) where nominees face close races with spreads within the margins of error in several centers.

Both candidates spent the final week before the election campaigning hard in those states, and Harris visited Pennsylvania for a series of rallies in several cities on Monday. Trump spent the day there before an evening rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

It is highly unlikely that the mainstream media will declare a winner on Tuesday night, as had been the norm until 2020, due to the closeness of the races in the battleground states.

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